The subjects (9 men and 5 post-menopausal women) were randomly allocated, in a cross-over design, to two periods of 4 weeks of an energy restricted diet of 1200 kcal as either a conventional diet (LC- CONV) or a special energy restricted diet compensated by proteins (LC-P-LGI). The two nutritional periods were separated by a wash-out interval of 8 weeks. Before the start of the study, all subjects were instructed to maintain their usual lifestyle during the experimental period.Anthropometric parameters, glucose and lipid homeostasis and inflammatory markers were evaluated before and after each dietary period.Body fat and fat-free mass distributions were measured by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA, GE Lunar Prodigy Corporation, Madison, WI, USA) before and after each dietary period at the fasting state.